Similar temporal slipping of meal terms is attested elsewhere:In Danish "dinner" would be "middag", literally mid-day, which used to refer to lunch-time meals. Also in Danish, Frokost (lunch) was literally "early-meal", and used to be breakfast.

@OleJack I don’t have research, but 50 years ago my great-grandmother in rural North Carolina served “dinner” as the main meal if the day at noon. “Supper” was the lighter evening meal. My cousin once remarked during a week-long stay with her, “whatever happened to lunch.”

I gather that for farm families the noon meal is the largest to sustain the afternoon’s work in the fields. I infer “dinner” migrated to the evening with customs changing to a big meal after work.

@OleJack I don't know the scholarship (sorry), but as a data point, growing up in rural Minnesota we used lunch vs supper; dinner in my parents' generation was synonymous with lunch, while for me (90s kid) it mostly corresponded with meals at holiday and formal gatherings. Additionally, I know of the French "dîner" (evening meal) vs the more linguistically-conservative French Canadian "dîner" (lunch) vs "souper" (supper).

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